Nuke plant emergency testing rules changing

SEABROOK — Recent problems with emergency preparedness at Seabrook Station came to light against a backdrop of federal changes to testing U.S. nuclear plants' ability to deal with accidents.

Shir Haberman

SEABROOK — Recent problems with emergency preparedness at Seabrook Station came to light against a backdrop of federal changes to testing U.S. nuclear plants' ability to deal with accidents.

Two weeks ago, Seacoast residents learned the operators of Seabrook Station failed to properly detect a simulated radiological release at the plant and failed to advise state emergency planning officials during a test of the emergency preparedness process held in April. A Nuclear Regulatory Commission report on the incident, issued May 29, stated plant staff also failed to detect the simulated lapse until NRC inspectors pointed it out. Seabrook plant spokesman Alan Griffith acknowledged the mistakes.

"We are confident in our ability to protect the public health and safety, (but) this is clearly an area for us to improve," Griffith said. "The best thing we can do is learn from this."

Last week, a phone line from the Seabrook plant to emergency response officials in Massachusetts was found inoperable. This was discovered when the plant's Administration Building was evacuated following a spill of a small amount of highly corrosive ammonium hydroxide, an event that required the notification of emergency response officials in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, as well as the NRC. The phone line problem delayed the required notification by several minutes.

Griffith said while he was unfamiliar with details of the phone problems, "(the plant has) multiple communication backups. There are many ways of making those notifications."

In an Associated Press report published in May, reporter Jeff Donn wrote, "Without fanfare, the nation's nuclear power regulators have overhauled community emergency planning for the first time in more than three decades, requiring fewer exercises for major accidents and recommending that fewer people be evacuated right away."

The new standards call for the inclusion of a scenario in some emergency planning exercises normally conducted by plant and community personnel, that measures the ability to deal with situations in which there is no release of radiation, the AP reported. Federal regulators said the change was made to make the exercises less predictable.

"The NRC learned an important lesson in its (emergency preparedness) review — plant personnel and state and local officials had become so used to scenarios requiring evacuation that they made decisions long before available information would support their actions," the agency said in a prepared statement issued in May, after the AP article was published.

However, some state and local emergency planners say exercises that don't test the abilities of nuclear power plants to appropriately react to radiological releases have no place in a program designed to protect the public, Donn wrote, and nuclear safety groups contend emergency planners should be dealing with worst-case scenarios rather than situations that don't affect the public.

The new federal guidelines also affect who would be evacuated in the event of a major radiological release and how often evacuation procedures would be tested. While previous standards called for the evacuation of everyone within two miles of the plant and five miles downwind, the new standards have emergency personnel initially dealing only with those people within two miles of the plant with others being told to shelter in place, the AP story indicated.

The new guidelines keep the 10-mile and 50-mile evacuation planning zones in place, as well as the requirement that a full-scale exercise of emergency preparedness within the 10-mile zone be held every two years. However, the requirement for holding an emergency preparedness drill for the 50-mile zone has changed from every six years to every eight years, the AP reported.

Again the NRC defended its actions, calling the changes "poorly described" in the AP story and justifying them by indicating the health consequences of a radioactive release would be most severe for people living within two miles of a plant.

"Getting the 'two-mile' people relocated first is more effective than potentially clogging evacuation routes with people further away and can ensure resources are available for protective actions within 10 miles of the plant," the May statement indicated.

According to information collected by AP, the number of individuals living within 10 miles of nuclear power plants has increased by as much as four-and-a-half times since 1980, and there were an estimated 120 million Americans living within 50 miles of these plants as of the 2010 Census. These statistics, along with the information derived in the aftermath of last year's disaster at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan, have nuclear safety groups and environmentalists pushing for an extension of emergency planning zones around U.S. plants.

"In February, a national coalition of environmental and anti-nuclear groups asked the NRC to expand planning from 10 miles to 25 miles and to broaden the separate 50-mile zones to 100 miles," Donn wrote. "These groups also pressed for some exercises that simulate a nuclear accident accompanied by a natural disaster like an earthquake or hurricane — akin to the combination of tsunami, blackouts and meltdowns at Fukushima."

In its May statement, the NRC also said it would like to "set the record straight" concerning the allegation that the emergency planning changes were made "without fanfare." The agency said "the agency followed a very open, deliberate path in protecting the public by improving requirements for emergency preparedness plans and exercises at U.S. nuclear power plants."

The commission noted the process began in 2005, involved public conferences in 2007 and 2008, and culminated in a statement to AP and other media outlets concerning the changes in 2011. Work is also under way that could create new standards for nuclear power plants in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, the NRC said.

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